Saturday, March 29, 2014

Nasa has produced a striking time lapse animation of global temperature change since 1880. From their website: 'This color-coded map displays a progression of changing global surface temperatures anomalies from 1880 through 2012. Higher than normal temperatures are shown in red and lower then normal temperatures are shown in blue. Global surface temperature in 2012 was +0.55.'

New study published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management: Global warming will cause 180,000 cases of rape in the US

"This paper estimates the impact of climate change on the prevalence of criminal activity in the United States. The analysis is based on a 30-year panel of monthly crime and weather data for 2997 US counties. I identify the effect of weather on monthly crime by using a semi-parametric bin estimator and controlling for state-by-month and county-by-year fixed effects. The results show that temperature has a strong positive effect on criminal behavior, with little evidence of lagged impacts. Between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny, and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft in the United States."

Friday, March 14, 2014

On March 12, Gallup published a short report titled ‘Climate
Change Not a Top Worry in U.S’.Results
from the poll ‘puts climate change, along with the quality of the environment,
near the bottom of a list of 15 issues Americans rated in Gallup's March 6-9
survey.’And, ‘Thirty-one percent of
Americans indicate that they worry "a great deal" about the quality
of the environment this year, marking the lowest level of worry about the
environment more broadly since Gallup began measuring this in 2001’.

This after the USA experiences its third coldest winter on record.Still, rumour has it that the third coldest winter on record could be attributed to the warming of the polar ice cap. Perhaps someone could take the initiative to see if warmer polar temperatures were evident in 1899 and 1979, the other two coldest winters on record. No wonder the American public is losing interest. As for the low concern for the environment in general, could this reflect a hangover from the Great Climate Change Binge?Now, there’s a negative impact of climate change rhetoric.

Friday, March 7, 2014

A few days ago the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) published a report by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok (A sensitive matter: How the IPCC buried evidence showing good news about global warming), criticising the IPCC for its dealing with the issue of climate sensitivity, ie. the question of how temperatures will respond to greenhouse gas forcing. Judith Curry wrote the foreword to the report, admitting she had initial reservations about doing so ('I did think twice about writing a foreword for a GWPF publication. I try to stay away from organizations with political perspectives on global warming. That said, GWPF has done some commendable things, notably pushing for inquiries into the Climategate affair. And there really are very few options for publishing a report like this.')

"Sydney Opera House and Statue of Liberty 'will be lost to sea level rise.' Nearly one-fith of world cultural heritage sites would be affected by global warming of a further 3C, scientists warn".

The scientists vivedly illustrate their scientific study in an interview with the Guardian. From the tower of Pisa to Venice, from the "Hanseatic League cities" like Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen to the Sydney Opera house, their examples of endangered heritage sites coincide with many tourist destinations well known to the readers. The Guardian even displays a still from the climate thriller "the day after tomorrow" (statue of liberty) and a surreal photo of a Venice hotel lobby flooded by waters from the Grand Canal, turning the study in what it really is: a science fiction story.

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